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Ace Allotmeting

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I love my allotment. Sure, it's got a fair few weeds in but I've been keeping most of the veggie beds weed-free. I was reminded of how much I loved the allotment yesterday when I went, and everything is bursting with life! This is a flower patch I grew. I had about 50 packets of seeds (a joblot) that were all really out-of-date. I decided the best thing to do would be to mix them all up together so I got an old mayonnaise jar and tipped them all in. The result...magic! Then it was onto clearing the weeds from around the flowers. The Homebase in Wick is closing in a couple of weeks so these were bought at the Closing Down sale. After a couple of days, they seemed to die off but have perked up recently. More magic! The pumpkins were other plants that, when I planted out, shrivelled into a brown mess and seemed to die. They are tough cookies, though, and came back. I don't think they'll be strong enough to have fruit but
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"How to Get Out of Prison"

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Redrafting my book is meaning re-writing my book in places to make sure it has a satisfactory, middle-grade conclusion. One significant thing I have changed is that, instead of getting out of a prison using simple brute force, my characters have to use their cunning. This is simply to teach middle grade readers that violence is not the answer and they should use their intelligence instead. (I hasten to add that the characters are locked up through no fault of their own!) But how do you get out of prison? Aside from the classic "dig a hole with your spoon", I did not have a clue how they could manage it. So this is when Google comes into play... Initially searching "how to get out of a dungeon" all this came up with was several computer game forums where people wanted to know how to get to the next level. Ok. Try again. "How to get out of prison" included some funny, some serious articles about how to actually escape from Her Majesty&
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Contains Mild Peril

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Crowvus Publishing Even though it is still a full year to my book launch, I'm going crazy on research! On one of my blog travels (fitted in between Holiday Gardening Club at school, and my driving lesson - stay off the roads and pavements!) I came across a guest post by Glen C. Strathy , a middle grade author. The article can be found here. Middle grade is the age bracket for my book, Taking Wing, and Glen C Strathy makes a super point about thinking about the gatekeepers for this genre. The gatekeepers are teachers, librarians and parents who will buy the book if they think it's suitable for children. The author then goes on to say that "o bviously, that means no graphic sex, profanity, horror, or violence." Reading this, my heart begins to beat faster. Ok, there are no gory details in my book, but there is violence and a great deal of peril (that word that the BBFC love putting on DVD covers!) Glen C Strathy does say that fighting monsters is fi
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